


Build me back up

by Aethelar



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Graves is trying ok but it's hard, Legilmency can do a lot of damage, M/M, Memory Loss, Queenie and Graves are best friends fight me on this, Swooping evil venom can only help so much
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-16
Packaged: 2021-02-07 07:01:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21453937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar
Summary: Grindelwald tore Graves' mind apart to get what he needed from him and then left him like that, wrecked and falling apart.So Graves picks up the pieces and tries to fit them together again.
Relationships: Original Percival Graves/Newt Scamander, Queenie Goldstein & Original Percival Graves
Comments: 6
Kudos: 176





	Build me back up

**Author's Note:**

> Originally prompted by @paintingraves (and originally involving a lot of me yelling _no_ and _do not want_ before I knuckled down and wrote)

The thing is, Graves held out. His shields were stronger than Grindelwald was anticipating, stronger than they had any right to be - stronger than any learned legilimens could pierce. Grindelwald certainly couldn't. Graves bares his teeth and his grin is sharp with victory; this is _his_ battlefield, his armour and his arena and Grindelwald doesn't stand a chance.

Somewhere Graves has a memory. In it, a younger Graves flicks his eyes up to the younger Queenie he's meeting for the first time. The younger Queenie suppresses a frown when she realises that he's not running his gaze down her chest; she listens, and his thoughts aren’t quickened by that hint of _what if_ that every man has when she walks past.

The memory continues: She notices the way his breath catches when his neighbour leans across him to shake her hand, the way Graves’ eyes linger for a fraction of a second on the undone top buttons of the man’s shirt. Her face clears with understanding, and Graves' own face tips into confusion and sudden wide eyed panic as he figures out that she noticed. More memories follow, days and weeks and months down the line: they drift together as colleagues and allies and friends, loitering around the edges of various social functions. Graves’ scowls drive off the more persistent of Queenie’s admirers and Queenie’s gentle smiles halt the rumours that had begun to circle about Graves.

It takes a while for Graves to twig about the legilimency, and he doesn’t need to be a mind reader to see the faint hint of apprehension on Queenie’s face when she notices. “Coffee?” he offers innocently, passing her the mug - and is struck by the sudden memory of the way Nadir had looked, shirt thrown to floor and fingers fumbling with the buttons of his trousers. So strange how these things happen, how memories can leap out of the blue like that. So strange.

Queenie pauses, one hand hovering over the coffee, but only for a second. She takes it and brushes past him in a smooth movement, murmuring just low enough for him to hear: “Daley from records wants to bend you over his desk and make you scream.”

Graves chokes on nothing and stares after her, wide eyed and shocked. She adds a jaunty swing to her hips and waves her mug at him in thanks, and that’s round one to Queenie.

That's one memory, but there are more; round two to Queenie again, round three to Graves, rounds four seven eight and nine to Queenie but five and six to him. He learns to stop counting them. Even when he’s managed to get his occlumency to a stage that it takes her a while to get around it, she somehow manages to beat him. It’s easier on his pride not to keep a running tally of exactly how much she outclasses him. But still, it’s good practice and Queenie is not only a natural legilimens she’s a damn sneaky one, and Grindelwald just can’t compare.

The dark lord’s attacks slide off his shields like shadows from a candle flame and Graves bares his teeth in his sharp-edged victory grin. Round one to Graves.

But Graves… Graves. Queenie never meant to hurt you, Graves. She tested your shields in every way she had, beaming with pride when you strengthened them and smoothed over the weaknesses, but she never meant to hurt you. Grindelwald… does.

Round two digs rotting tendrils into the base of Graves’ shields and detonates them. Round two flings memories like hailstones on a howling wind and Grindelwald laughs as he picks through the broken pieces for the knowledge he needs.

Round two leaves Graves to slump glassy-eyed and pained against the wall as jagged snatches of thought scream into the void of his empty skull. The memories of Queenie, of teasing each other over mugs of coffee, of the quirk to her smile when she one ups him again; they're shattered, picked over, discarded.

“How very obliging of you, director,” Grindelwald purrs as he leaves the room. “I’ll be sure to give Miss Goldstein your regards.”

Graves doesn’t hear him. His life hovers around him in fragmented shards; he’s six years old, thirty four, nineteen. His mother is scolding him - praising him - holding him close as he cries - he parries a curse - Queenie laughs - the sun is shining on a moonlit room as he runs on his father’s shoulders while his aurors scream his name.

He slots them together as well as he can, but… it isn’t well. He knows this. He’s running blind, trying to group them by people’s ages or guessing which groups of memories go where. He discards a lot of it. Hours spent training, the feel of dredging the last scraps of power from his overtaxed reserves, the ache and burn in his muscles - how can he tell which training session goes where? He presses them into one and pushes them aside, and they melt and fade. He forgets how to recognise when he’s nearing his limit and one day that could cause trouble, but there are more important things to detangle.

He runs gentle fingers over the cracks in his mind and asks himself if he is a man called Graves who goes by Percival or a man called Percival who goes by Graves. He can’t tell. A lady with curly hair smiles at him and he draws the word _sister?_ in the air over her head, but there’s nothing of her as a child so he scrubs it out. He tries _lover_ and that's not right either, so he waves the words away and turns to something else.

There is a memory where he runs away, and he cradles it in his hands for a long time before closing them and snuffing it out. He does not want to be a man who runs away.

It’s only when he looks up that he sees the chain of other memories falling after it, but the moment is gone - when he finds the scene where he drags himself back, it means nothing to him.

He reaches next for a man, one with red-gold hair and freckles, one that frowns at him in concern and confusion.

“Mr Graves?” the memory asks. Graves scrawls _work contact?_ in the air above it and pushes it to one side until he has more evidence for where the man fits.

“Mr Graves, can you hear me?” the same memory asks, and Graves adds a note - _was there when I was injured; auror maybe?_ \- and picks up a picture of the man he thinks might be his grandfather.

But the man with freckles, the man Graves has started calling _English_ in his mind, he doesn’t go away. It’s as though once Graves has found the first memory of him he’s opened a dam; they’re everywhere. English drinks tea. English leans over him to check his temperature. English turns to someone else and says _I can try something else - I think the first potion helped, but Swooping Evil venom is more meant to remove bad memories than fix broken ones._ English scribbles notes and chews his lip in concentration. English naps with his head pillowed on his arms. English snuffles in his sleep.

_Work contact?_ gets scrubbed out replaced with _friend_ replaced with _family?_ replaced with _partner_ replaced with _husband?_ because Graves can’t work out how English fits in the timeline. The memories are too similar, and English seems to be the same age, Graves can’t have known him long - but why would Graves have so many memories coming so thick and so fast unless he was important? It doesn’t make _sense._

The curly-haired girl - Queenie, Graves found her name and she’s called Queenie and she’s his friend - appears in one of English’s memories. She hands him a steaming mug and a paper bag from some local bakery, and when she leans over she rests her hand on his shoulder and smiles at him. Graves leaps forwards, scribbling notes because Queenie is _<strike>friend</strike> best friend_ and if Queenie knows English maybe some of her memories will tell him the truth. He flicks through them, searching for any glimpse of the man because _come on_ Queenie, give him this, tell him who English is, is he partner doctor love of his life –

Queenie looks up, surprised, her hands flying to her mouth. “Graves?” she asks in a quavering voice, and Graves flings the memory centre stage with an expansive gesture. English looks up, dreamy eyes intent (and Graves has spent so long studying those eyes and trying to find an answer but he’s never seen them sharpen like this.)

“He’s asking who you are,” Queenie says, answering English’ unasked question, and Graves tags this memory with _first meeting?_ in shaky, excited script.

“Oh,” English says. He hesitates, then smiles, and Graves’ breath catches because it’s like the sun. _Boyfriend,_ he labels English hopefully, because if this was the first time he met him then he can see so easily how he’d fallen in love. Queenie hiccoughs a laugh, eyes wide and stunned, and Graves wonders what he’d said in the memory. He can never hear his own voice.

“My name is Newt,” English says. “Nice to meet you, Mr Graves.”

He ducks his head and averts his gaze, and Graves can’t see himself in the memory and he doesn’t fully know who he is, but he thinks he’s the sort of man that would have stepped forward and dropped a kiss to English’s - to Newt’s - knuckles.

In the memory, Newt blushes scarlet, and Graves slots him into his mind with a satisfied smugness. _Boyfriend,_ he captions the bundle of memories, and starts trawling through the remaining fragments to see if he can find any of them dating.

“Mr Graves?” one of the memories says behind him, but Graves pushes it aside.

“He’s gone, honey,” memory-Queenie answers, and Graves flaps an annoyed hand until the memory fades out entirely. He needs to find the memories of Newt. Needs to know what their first date was, what Newt likes, what Newt looks like when Graves takes him home and lays him back on a bed, what sounds Newt makes when Graves undoes him -

The fragments he needs elude him, but he keeps searching. He has a boyfriend, and a best friend, and a family, and he’ll build himself back into a person piece by piece until he’s ready to see them again.


End file.
